Search This Blog

We are committed to making a positive difference through our interventions to deliver outstanding results. Our start point is always the ‘client needs’ and if we feel that we could genuinely add value to what our client is doing, then we will be pleased to prepare a proposal. We greater satisfaction in achieving success through honest, professional and timely results coupled with strict adherence to the view that for our clients achieve their goal(s), we will have achieved our goal.

Subscribe to this blog

Follow by Email

Global poverty has powerful levers. It’s a problem unlike any other.

I was born in
Kenya. I have been privileged to work in rural and urban Kenya; lived and
worked in rural and urban Uganda and exchanged cultural practices with the
people of Zimbabwe while working with the marginalized communities in the urban
and peri-urban settings of Harare. All this while, I worked with women and
youth predominantly and I must say, they are the drivers of development and in
that case, eradication of poverty that does not apportion a bigger chunk of the
resources – human and resource capital to these two categories are fallacies.
Hunger, extreme poverty and lack of alternatives are man-made problems and
addressing and reversing their impact is equally the task of the same man.

According to you, what is
poverty? extreme poverty? While working with ActionAid International Uganda
in the Eastern side – Namutumba District,I once
stayed overnight with a family. They were wonderful people.They
invited me into their home. We sang songs togetherand
ate a simple dinner.They gave me a blanket to sleep on the floor.In
the morning, however, there was nothing to eat. And then at lunchtime, I
watched with an increasingly compassionate feelingas
the mother of the family cooked porridge as a substitute for lunch.For
that meal, every child drank one cup to survive.And
I cannot tell you how ashamed I feltwhen they handed one of those cups to me,and
I knew I had to accept their hospitality.

Children need
food not only to survive but also to grow physically and mentally.Every day they
fail to eat, they lose a little bit of their future.Amongst the
extreme poor, one in three childrenare
permanently stunted from a lifetime of not eating enough.When that's
combined with poor access to health care, hunger and extreme poverty curb human
potential in every possible way.We see
ourselves as a thinking, feeling and moral human race,but until we
solve these problems,we fail that
standard,because every
person on this matters.This child
matters.These children
matter.This girl
matters.

You know, we see the
impact of poverty and how it ravages our society thread,and we're upset by
them,but it seems like such a
big problem and so, we leave it not knowing that “one man’s meat is another man’s
poison”. We don’t know how to
take effective and sustained action.

I live and
work in the field of awareness & empowerment, capacity building, and as a
practitioner in development work,I believe that
poverty is on a large scale, a solvable problem.Let's engage
our brains.Let's engage
our collective passion for problem-solvingand figure out
what those levers are.

Most of the
world's poor are farmers.Think about
how extraordinary this is.If this
picture represents the world's poor,then more than
half engage in farming as a major source of income. This gets me really
excited.All of these
people, one profession.Think how
powerful this is.When farmers
become more productive, then more than half the world's poor can earn more
money and climb out of poverty.And it gets
better.The product of
farming is, of course, food.So when
farmers become more productive, they earn more food,and they don't
just help themselves,but they help
to feed healthy communities and thriving economies.And when
farmers become more productive, they reduce environmental pressure.We only have
two ways we can feed the world:we can either
make our existing farmland a lot more productive,or we can
clear cut forest and savannah to make more farmland,which would be
environmentally disastrous.Farmers are
basically a really important leverage point.When farmers
become more productive,they earn more
income, they climb out of poverty,they feed
their communities and they reduce environmental land pressure.Farmers stand
at the center of the world.

Most of the farmers
I know are actually women - whether commercial or subsistence, they are farmers.Look at the strength
and the will radiating from women.

They are physically
strong, mentally tough,and will do whatever
it takes to earn a better life for their families.

If we're going to
put the future of humanity in one person's hands,then I'm really glad
it's the woman.

There's just
one problem:many smallholder
farmers lack access to basic tools and knowledge.Currently,
they take a little bit of saved food grain from the prior year,they plant it
in the ground and they till it with a manual hand hoe and it's why many farmers
are still very poor.But good news,
again. According to me, humanity actually solved the
problem of agricultural poverty years ago.Let
me walk you through the three most basic factors in farming.First,
hybrid seed is created when you cross two seeds together.If
you naturally pollinate a high-yielding varietytogether
with a drought-resistant variety,you get a hybrid that inherits positive traits
from both of its parents.Next, conventional fertilizer, if used responsibly,is
environmentally sustainable. These are known as farm inputs - farm inputs that
need to be combined with good practice.When
seeds are spaced and planted with massive amounts of compost,a
farmer can multiply his or her harvests.These
proven tools and practices can tripleagricultural productivity in Africa,moving
mass numbers of people out of poverty.

If we are willing,every one of us has a role to
play.We first need more people to
pursue careers in human development,especially in Africa as a developing.We need more front line health
workers, teachers, farmer trainers,sales agents for life-improving
goods.These are the delivery people
that dedicate their careersto improving the lives of
others.

This may surprise you, but no
matter what your technical specialty,there is a role for you in this
fight. On the other hand, private
businesses often struggle to profitably serve the extreme poor,so philanthropy still has a
major role to play.Anybody can give, but we need
more leadership.We need more visionary
philanthropistsand global leaders who will
take problems in human developmentand lead humanity to wipe them
off the face of the planet.

We need more
leaders.Humanity has
put people on the moon.We've invented
supercomputers that fit into our pocketsand connect us
with anybody on the planet.We've run
marathons at a five-minute mile pace.We are an exceptional people.But we've left
more than one billion of our members behind.We just need
to deliver proven goods and servicesto everybody.If we have the
will, every one of us has a role to play.Let's deploy
our time, our careers,our collective
wealth.Let us deliver
an end to extreme povertyin this
lifetime.

Get link

Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Google+

Email

Other Apps

Popular posts from this blog

A success story shows an organization or
individual making a difference in people’s lives. It describes a positive
change and shows how that change benefits the people of a given area of
intervention. A great success
story applies the use of evidence to show the value of our interventions in
terms measurable changes in knowledge, skills, motivation, behavior, decision
making, practices, policies, social action, social, economic and environmental
conditions that derive from a cause-and-effect relationship. You can write a success story about an entire
project, program or part of a program (i.e. activity) that is particularly
noteworthy and significant in terms of results and its impacts. It may be about
an innovation, emergency response or outstanding effort. Whatever you choose to
write about, your story should show your intervention making a difference in
targeted areas. Why is it important for an Organization, Group or Individual to write success stories? • To show accountability for …

Managers and
organizations have diverse philosophies about how to motivate employees and
manage teams. Some seek to create cooperation and loyalty. Others rely more on
the competitive spirit to get things done. And the truth is different
approaches can work, but it’s important to understand what kind of work
environment you’re creating with your approach. So the question is: Are you
more Maslow or Machiavelli. These two
paradigms are familiar to many, but they represent extremely different ways of
managing people. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs tells us that people have certain
requirements that have to be met before they can be truly fulfilled. In the
workplace, this theory demands attending to the needs of each employee. Making
enough money to live, job security, belonging to a team, excelling at a job,
and doing meaningful work are all motivating factors. The idea is that if
employees are happy at work, they’ll be more creative and produce more. The
Machiavellian style is very differen…

What
is the difference between senior and junior project managers in terms of
decision making. More specifically, while senior managers focus on potential
project difficulties, junior managers are more easily swayed by their project’s
plan and its deficiencies. Spotting problems with your plan and being able to foresee
difficulties are both essential skills for a project manager, but my argument is
that while the first one can be acquired by anyone willing to put in the needed
effort, the second skill is much harder to develop. This is why I believe in
the importance of managing a project in a field you master. Up to this point, I am
certain not everyone shares this view. Some people indeed hold the opinion that
project management is a “standalone” skill: once you master the mechanics, you
can apply it to any context. In the same vein, it could be argued that
even a project manager with a lot of experience in a given field cannot
possibly hope to master every single aspect of the proje…